Don Miller: New-look Herald here Tuesday

Tuesday's edition of The Monterey Herald will feature a new look. Not radically different, but different.

A different color palette. New headline fonts, some new names.

Here's one change you'll notice right off the bat, and it's a little subtle: We'll return to our name of yore. Starting Tuesday, we're "The Monterey Herald." In smaller type, you'll see the rest of our name: "Serving Monterey County."

Why the change? Well, the shorter name is part of our new look. For another thing, the name matches how most people refer to us — and it's the name of our online identity, montereyherald.com.

We'll still be covering the county, of course, sending reporters and photographers to Carmel, Marina, Salinas and points beyond.

For The Herald, it's our first redesign in years. If you want a complete guide to the changes, by the way, take a look at the ads we've been publishing in recent days.

So back to the redesign. You might ask — what for? You already changed some of the comics and advice columnists, didn't you? Not to mention the editor and the Opinion page.

And, yeah, we did that — and many readers have weighed in with their views on those changes.

Now this.

So, let me explain a bit. The redesign is part of a project where many of the pages common to our regional group of newspapers are being produced in one location. This makes dollars and sense because it eliminates duplication of effort among newspapers. For instance, why, in the Digital Age, would a cluster of newspapers all work separately on a similar international news report, when a central location can produce this far more efficiently? Why would newspapers make separate contracts with weather services, news and features services, and companies providing puzzles and games?

No 21st-century industry would operate that way, and newspapers can't do it anymore either.

And here's the upside I mentioned earlier: The new, more modern Herald isn't losing anything in the way of local information. Instead, our resources and efforts will be concentrated on providing local news, sports and feature stories, along with providing compelling photographs — and a new design.

(Timeout and note to readers: the Doonesbury comic strip is no longer running because artist Garry Trudeau has put it on hiatus while he works on a TV project. This has nothing to do with the redesign, but since I may have gained your attention, why not reiterate the point?)

Here's a few new things we'll be introducing over the next week:

A Sunday "Community" section along with a page devoted to local education and school events.

Saturday will bring a new Health section, which will include our coverage of news aimed at seniors.

We're adding a local section front to Fridays, and will have local news heading up its own section — in addition to the front page — on Saturdays and Sundays too.

Our Wednesday food section has been renamed "Eat + Drink" and has expanded, and will include more local and regional news and information about food, restaurants, wine and more.

On Fridays, we're adding a Monterey Bay recreation page.

Home and Garden moves to Friday, with more local content as well as a new design.

Our weekly GO! arts and entertainment magazine will have a new look and more local information.

Our plan isn't that secret: It's to concentrate on comprehensively covering the Monterey Peninsula and the Salinas area, to be your eyes and ears on local government and to let you know about local trends, events and what's upcoming.

We know many of you will want to weigh in on these changes — and we want to hear what you think. Of course, we'd like you to give us a few days to iron out the kinks — it's a complicated task launching a redesign and a new publishing system and protocols. We also realize that sometimes change in something as valued and time-honored as a daily newspaper can feel abrupt or uncomfortable and there may be facets of our new approach that might not be appreciated.

But with this undertaking, we're not going to have a lot of time to answer phone calls, voice mails or even emails, at least not right away. So we're asking that you contact us one of two ways to register your thoughts on the new look of The Herald: